fdisk indicates a geometry with 60801 cylinders, the last one used being 54945 which leaves 5856 cylinders unused. i had left this space thinking that i could use it as a pool of drive space to draw from later using lvm (for linux systems) and (g)vinum on the obsd system.

it appears to me that i am out on a limb? open to suggestions.

Last edited by diablito; 7th June 2010 at 12:56 AM.
Reason: formatting

Yes, from an MBR partitioning perspective, you are SOL. You did not account for your final But not from an OpenBSD perspective, as long as you are aware that you are about to "go beyond" the MBR partitioning schema.

Realize that OpenBSD uses MBRs for booting, for finding the OpenBSD partition, and for finding any foreign partitions. But OpenBSD partitions (a-p) are not stored in the MBR, they are stored separately, in the disklabel.

You can create disklabel partitions that reside anywhere on the drive, the disklabel(8) program uses the OpenBSD partition by default. You can change that default. Look at the man page for disklabel, and the "b" command.

If you have the time, it is best to repartition, and clean up your mess.